Iexo Peoa
Caldari Provisions
Caldari State
2
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Posted - 2012.12.04 20:32:00 -
[1] - Quote
Tiberizzle wrote:I ratted anoms for a few hours today with a grip of sentry carriers and I see approximately ****-all came of tuning the aggro of elite cruisers.
I lost a total of 417 Garde IIs. That's four hundred and seventeen, not a typo.
Pretty much all of them to elite cruisers.
The elite cruisers immediately target a carrier's sentries, all of the elite cruiser target switches are to other sentries, and the damage from elite cruisers is so effective against sentries that they die from focus fire before it's practical to notice and react. That some whack-a-mole bullshit with the clusterfuck of a drone UI would be the only way to manage the aggro (because they seem to respond to nothing else other than the target disappearing) is complete ****.
On the whole this change, even if it didn't exacerbate a dozen different bugs (random split aggro, random aggro on untrackable targets due to the spastic cycling of ewar, and so on) in the drone AI, and wasn't so poorly tuned one wonders about the additive package of the particularly influential brand of gasoline whoever green-lighted this must be huffing, would be a goddamned abomination. But the fact is, it's so broken and buggy and off the charts poorly balanced you should be researching forms of ritual suicide so that you might approach the repentance due for inflicting it in its current form not ill-prepared.
While I wouldn't put it so abrasively as this, and would certainly not go so far as to suggest suicide, or even accuse anyone of huffing various petroleum products, I must agree with this evaluation. This AI change, as things stand, is an enormous nerf to drones, which are (especially conventional drones) barely practical as it is, as a weapon in general, nevermind a primary weapon.
The damage to drones now inevitably incurred, especially hull, is expensive to repair, and the drones themselves may need to be replaced, which is a significant expense if you're running Tech 2 drones. This becomes a real problem when using medium and heavy drones at long range, as they are very big targets, and lack the speed to return before incurring significant damage, or death. On top of this, it becomes difficult to manage drones when doing other things, such as salvaging, or using other weapons, when they may randomly start taking damage without warning.
All in all, the AI improvement seems like yet another monumental nerf to drones, particularly of the conventional type, which are already barely practical. As such, I believe that drones have never been more in need of an overhaul as now. They need a better means of management, first off, perhaps a way to know when drones are getting aggro/taking damage and which are, a way for them to shake, or at least resist taking damage, through evasive measures, or at least a way to pull them more quickly and efficiently than right clicking, as soon as you see they're taking damage, among other things.
In the mean time, perhaps reducing the effectiveness of NPCs against drones, or their affinity for killing them, would be a good temporary measure, to prevent them from being completely useless while further updates are in the works.
Kismeteer wrote:Tiberizzle wrote:I lost a total of 417 Garde IIs. That's four hundred and seventeen, not a typo. So what you're saying is that rats target drones, especially when you keep throwing more at them. Good to know.
And for the record, he already stated he was in a carrier. A carrier can't do anything besides throw drones, they don't have anything else. |